LaserBlog.com

Bummer. I was hoping that there’d be some interesting meetup.com meetups while I was in Ireland. I’m not even sure if we’ll be in Dublin or what. I have no idea. But none of the Dublin meetups (that I’d be interested in) are while I am there. Oh well.

Any bloggers from Ireland read this? Doubt it. I’d love to meet up w/ some other bloggers while there. Or other Photographers. Or other computer nerds.

Oh god, SPARE me!

Some dog food, DOG FOOD, is advertising on national tv that is has the “lowest carbs of any other brand of dog food”.

IT’S TOO MUCH! TIME TO STOP THE MADNESS!!!!!!!!

Ok. I feel much better today. I’m not sure if I just would have woken up feeling better, or if it’s because I was awoken by the phone w/ my mom on the other end telling me that she and I are GOING TO IRELAND for a week in September all expenses paid!

WheeeeEEEEEEEEEEE!

CLICK BELOW TO READ MORE:
(more…)

EVERY time I hear that song I cry. EVERY time. I can’t help it. When will it get easier? HUH? I just miss him so much. It’s only been 5 months. Life SUCKS! It’s not fair to lose two siblings so young, it’s just FUCKED UP! Why can’t he come back? Why did he have to go? Why did either of them have to go?
:..(…….

Hello?
Is anybody out there?
*crickets*
*crickets*
I feel sad today. I just do. I have all day. A million little reasons.

No!!!!!
http://www.naladahc.com/
Not blogging anymore?!?
Me sad!
Crap!
I was feeling sad already today, and now this.
Come back!

I started a Yahoo Group for fans of MoveOn.org (www.moveon.org). The Ygroup is at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/moveonfans. It’s a discussion board or message board for people who would like to talk politics and/or moveon.org. “A forum to discuss: Political progress and change, progressive viewpoints, democracy, political action, getting people to vote, resisting big media, grassroots involvement, activism, advocacy groups, campaign finance, envronmental issues, energy issues, the war in Iraq, bringing democracy back to Washington and back to the people.”

So last night was that MoveOn.org party.

It was neat. Nice to meet like-minded people. We listened in on a live interview w/ Michael Moore that MoveOn.org was doing. It was interactive but of course in a short interview only a few questions from around the country could be answered. There were hundreds of parties going on all over the country at the same time.

The press showed up. Two of the local evening news crews showed up. I was on tv. Me in all my gorgeous glory. The camera loved me. I rock.

Hahah, ok, I kid. But I was on tv.

What I found interesting was the prospect that this new electronic voting system does not give a receipt or keep a paper record. So it was suggested that we all vote by proxy, because then there would be a paper record of our vote. There’s even a petition letter you can easily fill out and send about the lack of paper trail. http://moveon.org/protectourvotes/

I thought I had blogged this photo before, but here is a great shot of my Fujitsu P1120 showing how small it is. This is a photo of it sitting on a mousepad.

Just for fun I’ve done a zoom comparison between three cameras and some different ways to zoom.

I have a great Canon EOS D60 digital slr [link || pix], but that camera (cameras with detachable lenses) are not allowed into NHL games and some other similar events, so I often use other cameras for zooming.

Sometimes I use an older Canon Elph S100 [link || pix] which doesn’t have a great zoom but works well held up to binoculars.
Now I have a new Panasonic Lumix FZ1v2 [link || pix] that has a high-powered built-in zoom.

Click here for a comparison of zooms and zoom methods.

It never ceases to amaze me how stupid people are.

When a person asks something on a forum, or shares their experience, is it NECESSARY to be condescending and sarcastic?

What this STUPID person doesn’t realize is that when people read his post, they will learn not to listen to him, they will learn not to respect his opinion.

Yet people continuously act this way. The anonymity of the internet allows them to be rude with no guilt. But it is they that look bad in the end.

Stupid motherf*ckers.

We’re going to a Moveon.org get-together tonight:
http://action.moveonpac.org/f911/

They’re having them all over. You can enter in your zip code on that page and find one near you. Should be interesting. Food, people, conversation… discussion of the movie Fahrenheit 9/11, listen to live internet interview with Michael Moore.

I’ve been wanting to do some low-light comparison shots between some of my digital cams. My new Panasonic Lumix FZ1 [cam || pix] is a great cam, but there are a couple issues I’m not real happy with. One is grain in low light conditions, and the other is some sort of light disortion around bright objects, some sort of chromatic abberation (see here)

So anyway, I did some test shots in low light between my Lumix, my older Canon Elph S100 [link || pix], and the U30 [link || pix].

The comparison is here:
http://www.laserblog.com/gallery/00shared/compare/index.htm
Exif data is included.

I basically took a model car and put it in a dim area by a lamp and
did test shots with and without flash.

Some are blurry, esp the older canon elph ones, but once I’d
downloaded the pix from all three cameras, I didn’t want to go back
and re-do them. Also, the shutter speed on the canon was slower than
on the other non-flash pictures.

What I wanted to see was if my $240 (off ebay) FZ1 had more grain than
my $150 U30 or my older Elph in low light ($400-$500 around Christmas of
2000). All are 2mp cams (except the elph is 2.1). I can’t understand
how the FZ1 can have so much grain in low light shots when the older
elph and cheaper U30 do not. That’s a mystery I have not figured out
yet. But anyway, this test satisfies my curiosity some. I reduced
the image sizes for the web but made sure not to change the quality or
sharpness when generating the image copies (using Breeze Browser).

I may or may not want to trade my Lumix in for a Canon S1, which is 10x zoom instead of 12x zoom, and 3.?mp instead of 2mp. Not sure yet.

I had a realization today.

How do you throw out a garbage can?

?

I mean, you put a garbage can at the curb, the garbage man is not going to take it away. He may wonder why it is empty, but he won’t take it away. It’s his job to leave them where he found them.

So what do you do if you want to throw out a garbage can?

M suggested that you take it to a dumpster, but then realized that that opens up a whole new fundamental problem: How do you throw out a dumpster?!?!?

I had this weird dream last night. Well, I always have weird dreams. Long, involved, weird dreams. It’s no wonder I wake up tired. Last night I dreamed that a bunch of bloggers got together for, I guess, some kind of meetup. But it was a weekend-long sleepover party meetup. A bunch of bloggers in the PJ’s hanging out all weekend long. In this dream I was on my way there and M said to me “Did you know that so-in-so has been blogging for days about how he’s taking bets on how long it’ll take to get in your pants?” and I felt all sad and used. But then we showed up and everyone was like “My god, Laserone is so gorgeous!” and instantly fell in love with me. I was a more beautiful and perfect version of myself. I can even remember what I was wearing and what my hair looked like (different from how it is, I hate my hair right now).

What a weird dream.

Oh, and I also dreamed that there were two eggs, and each began to hatch, and when they hatched, a tiny little kitten came out of each one.

Don’t ask me what I’m doing up at 4:37am. Just being a child. I’m not tired, so I’m still up playing w/ my toys and watching tv.

Ever wonder what goes on in our house in the middle of the night?

C’mon over. We’re just stayin’ up late doing our thing. You could stop by and hang w/ us, have a snack and a chat. We’ll leave a light on for ya.

I think the Lewis Black is my soul mate.

Have you ever seen his rants on The Daily Show? His rants and mannerisms are SO MUCH like mine it’s not even funny.

Everyone I ever dated, and most of my family, could not stand my rants. “Do you have to YELL?” “Why are you yelling at ME?” They didn’t understand that it was just a rant, an emphatic rant.

M is the only who understands me, or at least my rants. M actually thinks my rants are FUNNY! When I would rant around an ex, they’d inevitalbly get mad, which would then in turn make me mad when I wasn’t even mad before. But M just starts grinning, and eventually starts laughing. M’s not laughing AT me, just finds it amusing. That allows me to finish my rant, and feel relieved.

I watch Lewis Black, and he sounds SO MUCH like me it’s not even funny. He was ranting about kids one time on The Daily Show, and he’s grabbing at the desk, as if he’s about to crawl OVER it, and at at one point he goes:
“I”m going to get a vasectomy… AGAIN!”

I about DIED laughing! I love him, he’s so great.

ALL GONE! I have no more invites. Maybe I’ll get more, but right now I’m out.

I thought I posted this already, but I guess I forgot to hit “save”.

If you would like a Gmail invite, leave a comment here. NO PROMISES. I have friends IRL who might like them, so I don’t know how fast they’ll go.

NEW STUDY FINDS LINK BETWEEN STRESS AND HEART DISEASE!

Uh…

er………

*inhales*…

DDDDDDDDDDDUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Whose tax dollars went into this “we already KNEW THAT” study?!?

M’s car got it’s FIRST ding the other day. Sad. What is WRONG with people?!?!? We go through aLOT of trouble to park far away, to avoid other cars, and yet people still manage to fuck our cars up. How selfish. Just because you are mad at yourself for buying that fucking square Camry, or angry that you now live the mini-van life surrounded by screaming, sticky, smelly rugrats, don’t take it out on ME and MY CAR! Fuck you! Maybe it’s not spitefulness, but just carelessness, or ignorance, or flightyness. I don’t care. You’re still a pig for damaging our car and leaving the scene. All of you who cause damage to other people’s property and don’t give a shit or lose any sleep over it. Drive your sport ute thru the first three feet of my lawn. THAT’S OK. I didn’t have anything better to do with that several hundred dollars worth I’ll need to spend on sod! Ding up the perfect, brand new, beautiful blue Nissan 350z! I didn’t like it perfect ANYWAY!

/rant

We went and saw Fahrenheit 9/11 tonight (IMDB). Got there at 7pm, all early evening shows sold out, got tickets for 9:55 and then wondered how to kill 3 hours.

That actually turned out to be pretty easy as we headed to this tepanyaki place only to wait and wait and wait w/ no greeting nor word on how long the wait was. Finally when I thought I’d LITERALLY pass out from lack of food, I asked if there was enough of a wait time to order a drink and some sushi. They said yes so we had sushi and then got out table, then ate, and then got in the car to go to the movie and we got there just in time. Amazing that you can waste 3 hours driving to a nearby restaurant, waiting, waiting, eating, driving back.

Anyway, the movie was good. I liked it. Biased? I’m not sure what baised even means anymore.

Facts are facts, and the bottom line is that a Bush-loving movie producer could not produce the opposite of this movie. I mean, the facts, Michael Moore or not, pile up against Bush and his whole lie campaign.

I’m sad and embarassed to be an American. I was before I saw the Moore’s movie. I wasn’t before Bush came along.

Re. earlier, both VeriChat and Trillian were quick to fix the YIM connectivity problem. Kudos to both of them.

What’s interesting to me is that VeriChat sent me an email that said “We have completed the necessary modifications for Yahoo! IM to the VeriChat
servers. VeriChat users should now be able to use Yahoo! again.”

Why can’t Trillian fix things server-side as well? Every time Trillian has to fix something, they come out w/ a patch that we have to download and install. Verichat didn’t make us download or install anything, they fixed it server-side and now the program simply works again. I’m just curious as to whether Trillian could do it this way or not.

I need to sit down w/ the scanner. I have a trunk full of print photos, and even a folder (god knows where) of experimental black and whites I did on film and developed myself (w/ the help of a friend).

This week’s Photo Friday is “clouds”. The BEST cloud pic I ever did was w/ my old Canon AE-1 Program. I have to dig that up and scan it in. I should also sit down by my trunk of film photos and go thru them as well.

I have to go to the bathroom, blog later, Bye.

I want to live in Toronto.

I feel in love w/ that city from visiting all the time.

Last night I dreamed that I moved there. I was so happy.

Toronto is not 99% retired people, like this town. There are many people my age. Meetup.com meetups happen all the time and have good turnouts. There are a ton of photobloggers that live and shoot there. In this town, people go “what’s a photoblog?”. I hate the heat, I love the cold. I love to freeze. I love dark, dreary winter skies.

I wish I could live there.

LATER: I feel so alone. Nobody in this town blogs, photoblogs, or is my age. You sit at a red light, you look around, and it’s either a redneck, a dumptruck, or an old fart.

LATER: I want to like, rent a room on Queen street for like a month and just stay in the city, and meet people, and go photo-ing. Could M live without me for a month? Would it even be right? I hate living here, it’s too hot, it’s so boring.

What, you can drive you own car onto this thing and go for a spin????
http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/archives/photos_cityscape/040615_675.shtml

WOW. I think this is really cool. This photoblog, in this entry, there’s a magnifier that you can drag around:
http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/archives/flash_enabled/040622_691.shtml

Way cool.

Test from Slashdot meetup.

[ Posted by mail via qmail2mt.pl ]

Slashdot.Meetup.com
U goin’?

Tonite is the international Slashdot Meetup. Meet up with other slashdot nerds fans.

This is unreal:
http://www.ninja-assassin.com/mirror/Chernobyl/

A photoblog of a girl’s motorcycle ride thru Chernobyl.

via forty.something & Not On My Watch

UPDATE: There is some talk on the web of this site being a hoax, but from I can find is that the photos are real, all that is in question is whether she biked it alone or if she was in a car w/ others. Who cares about how she got there. If the pictures are real, that’s all that matters to me.